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Obama: US Tax Break as Early as April

by Jordan Yerman | February 21, 2009 at 12:31 pm

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The tax-break portion of the US economic stimulus plan will come into effect as early as April, with $400 per individual no longer being withheld.

In his weekly radio and internet address, he said the tax credit will leave a typical family with at least $65 US more every month.

Obama said the Treasury Department has begun directing employers to reduce the amount of taxes withheld from people's paycheques in accordance with the new law.

Meanwhile, the spin war continues, with public opinion dividing along party lines, as it did in Congress.

The survey found that 53 percent of respondents thought that the stimulus would improve economic conditions, while 44 percent thought it wouldn't. Looking deeper, CNN's polling director says, "Nearly nine in 10 Democrats favored the plan, while three-quarters of Republicans thought it was a bad idea."

At the district level, the National Republican Congressional Committee is launching robocalls against 10 potentially vulnerable House Democrats for "voting for nearly a trillion dollars in wasteful spending."

Though I daresay that robocalls (i.e. phone spam) are a display of laziness more than anything else: you want to say something, but you can't be bothered to actually pick up the phone.

Either way, people are passionate about what such a huge spending package will mean, even if it's only a fraction of the nearly $600,000,000,000 ($600 trillion) spent in Iraq. Personally, I'm not totally sold on all aspects of the bill, but I'd much rather see my tax money at work in America, and not getting thrown to the desert winds.

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Pythiian1

at 12:46 on February 21st, 2009

Thanks for the update on this issue.

As an aside, I'd be curious to know if those folks and governors who reject this stimulus package will voluntarily return their money to the government, or in the case of the governors, decline the funds.